On boredom

Daniel Smith on boredom:

Brodsky advised his listeners to give up trying to evade the feeling, and start respecting it. Boredom exists “to teach you the most valuable lesson in your life,” he said, “the lesson of your utter insignificance.” Boredom puts us in our tiny, fragile, finite place—and thank goodness for that, for “the more finite a thing is, the more it is charged with life,” with love, pain, excitement, and fear.

If you try to distract yourself from boredom, if you run from it, all will be lost. Brodsky quoted an imperishable line from Robert Frost: “The best way out is always through.” A note written by the novelist David Foster Wallace makes a similar point: “Bliss—a second-by-second joy and gratitude at the gift of being alive, conscious—lies on the other side of crushing, crushing boredom.”